Find something wrong with this picture? Me too.

But since we often define our success by the collective voice, we accept that’s the price we must pay. Perhaps somewhere in the back of our skulls that little piece of conscience we have left quietly tells us it’s wrong. But for some odd reason, we rarely listen.

If that’s success, I don’t want it.

I’d like to tell you something you probably won’t hear very often, but will completely make all the difference in your life. 

If you never define what success means to you, you’ll never find contentment. If you’re not completely clear about what brings you joy, you’ll never find success. You’ll be chasing something that, in the end, really doesn’t matter. Success is meaningless if you can’t measure when, where and how you’ll feel fulfilled.

But defining what success means to you isn’t enough. Even if you’re really clear and honest about what makes you happy, it’s still easy to become swayed. That’s because it’s one thing to define, but it’s an entirely different thing to accept.

And accepting that your path is the only one that matters — that you no longer care about the mainstream view of success — takes guts. Not to mention scary as hell.

It takes courage to swim upstream and fight the current of conformity. It’s uncomfortable going against the grain and embracing your inner renegade.

If defining is only half the equation, accepting your path requires…

Dropping Out.

I’ll be the first to admit that dropping out isn’t easy. The law of averages and majority rules creates a lot of resistance. Simply put, it’s not easy being the minority. (Institutionalization and domestication doesn’t help much either.)

Not to mention, breaking habits instilled since birth is insanely difficult hard. Completely rerouting limiting circuitry takes time, sweat and a mental breakdown persistence.

All of these tiny self-defeating beliefs are like thorns in your authentic life. One or two might give you an annoying itch. More than that and your movement is compromised.

The fact is, most of the heart squelching distress in your life is caused by resisting what is. Trying to force yourself to do things you don’t really want to do. We think these commitments are obligations and necessities, but they’re really not. The intelligence of the herd is often not very intelligent (imagine that) and “collective wisdom” is often a big, fat collective assumption.

So if doing what works (what’s supposed to work, anyway) isn’t working, it’s time to hang up your hat.

It’s time to drop out from:

• Caring more about how productive you are over how much you enjoy your day (ridiculous, but I struggle with this too).
• Living by an anxiety machine a clock and a schedule.
• Caring what other people think and basing your worth on outer acceptance.
• Living from the outside in. Chasing money, status and ego-driven desires.
• Seemingly required panels, boards, credentials, and expectations that come from society, your career, or yourself.

This list could go on and I’ve already clearly outlined much of what’s worth giving up here. What’s clear is that caring about stuff like this suffocates your dreams and drowns out the voice of your heart. Too much rigidity gets in the way of the beautiful and chaotic path of your heart.

Instead, maybe it’s time to:

• Learn to listen to the call of your heart more than the call of clever marketers.
• Get really clear about what success means to you and stop caring about what other people think.
• Find joy and purpose not just in the achievement of your desires, but in the movement towards what makes you come alive.
• Be incredibly disorganized and flaky. If obsession with perfection is taking up more time than the working on your dreams, it’s time to re-prioritize.
• Move through life deliberately.

The point of removing all of what’s not working isn’t to create a vacuum. Engagement in noise-removal is about creating the space for your dreams to grow and take root in the world. Dropping out simply means pulling all the unauthentic weeds in your life.

So what you’ve got to do is…

Create a “To-Stop” List.

We spend ridiculous amounts of time contemplating what we should add to our lives. We search for the quintessential pair of jeans, the most lucrative business ventures and the perfect partner. But rarely do we take stock of what’s not working. We forget that just as it’s important to add, it’s equally important to subtract.

Since this is such an unusual exercise, here are a few questions to spark your mind:

• What’s not working for you right now?
• If there were no consequences (imagined or real) what would you stop doing?
• What excuses do you regularly make that keep you from pursuing your dreams?
• Do you require permission to be happy? Do you think doing things slowly or doing things you love is not practical? Is it working for you?

Once your list is looking complete, pick one limitation to work on. Don’t try to tackle everything at once, it doesn’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried. As much as I despise these self-limiting agreements, it takes time to break them. But realize that that’s all they are – agreements. You can choose to stop agreeing with them at any time.

You’ve just got to pull them out one at a time. If you try to grab too many, you’ll break them and won’t take out the root. Before long the weeds spring back up and all your efforts will be in vain.

It may take time before they’re completely broken and the weeds stop coming back, but that’s okay. The water that is too clean has no fish.

What all of this really comes down to is living deliberately. Going with yourself and the call of your heart. It takes removing the noise to hear that call.

After all, what would you do with a hot piece of coal in your hand? You’d drop it of course.

And that’s exactly what we must do with limitations.

We’ve got to drop out.

It may cause a psychotic episode be difficult, but I will tell you this: The price is worth the promise.

When your dreams are reclaimed, you won’t have any regrets.

I have had a special treat for you today. I figured instead of asking for gifts and petitioning well-wishes, I would give you a gift instead.

But something went wrong, so I won’t be unveiling Illuminated Mind’s newest feature just yet. I would tell you what it’s all about. But that would ruin the surprise, right?

So here’s my second best gift to you today: the best-of Illuminated Mind. Here are the posts that shocked and inspired millions a few people. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Liberate Your Life: Put Yourself on Auto-Response
2. Enlightenment is Overrated
3. 10 Counterintuitive Ways to Improve Your Life
4. The Cult of Productivity & the Art of Purposeless Living
5. 33 of Life’s Most Powerful Lessons (over 100,000 views)
6. Living Freestyle; Life Without a Template
7. Embracing Creative ADD and Thinking Inside the Circle
8. 5 Signs You’ve Married Your Problems (and how to divorce them)
9. 10 Ways to Avoid Brainwashing
10. The Secret to Happiness: Stop Caring
11. 6 Keys to Develop the Action Habit
12. 7 Rules To Re-Claim the Ownership of Your Mind

This is a great intro of the best articles here for anyone new to this blog.

OKAY. So if you really want to give me a present for my birthday (who doesn’t like presents?) here’s what you can do:

1. Tell someone about Illuminated Mind, email someone an article, link to one of my posts on your blog, or add me to your blogroll. Hell, I’d be happy if you told your cat.
2. Make a donation in appreciation of my hard work to help make your life a little easier.
3. Digg, stumble, or del.icio.us bookmark, or vote for one of my articles in some way.
4. Link back to Illuminated Mind with this button (super cool, I made it myself).
5. Go to this article and rate it at the bottom (click on the little stars). If you give me a good rating, I might win a super cool prize.
6. Lastly, subscribe to Illuminated Mind (if you haven’t already).

Tomorrow I’ll be posting “year of change” article here, talking about what I’ve learned and the goals I’ve accomplished in the past year, as well as my new goals for this coming year. That’s it for now, I’m off to have Thai food and celebrate with my (most beautiful) wife.

I admit it. I am Enlightened. (If I was going to take the Zen approach, I might say I am Enlightened because I know there is no such thing as Enlightenment.) I’m not afraid to admit that I have “reached” Enlightenment. I think far too many people shy away from talking openly about being Enlightened because it’s such a taboo subject. After all, isn’t Enlightenment something reserved for sages and mystics?

Enlightened people aren’t simply sages though; they’re people like you and me. We wear regular clothes, we work regular jobs, we eat, drink, sleep, and go to the grocery store just like everyone else. You don’t have to be a celibate monk living in a monastery to be Enlightened. Placing Enlightenment beyond yourself just perpetuates the idea that you will never reach it.

I think part of the allure (and taboo aspect) of Enlightenment is the fact that it is so mysterious. Ohh, he’s enlightened, he must be above everyone else, seems to be a commonly held superstition. People think that becoming Enlightened brings you further away from reality. You completely transcend it and dematerialize. Poof. He was enlightened. And then, he disappeared. (Sounds more like David Blaine to me.)

Part of the problem is Enlightenment can mean many things. Bringing light to dark places, bringing clarity, and perceiving the truth are a few different interpretations. But ultimately, Enlightenment is understanding your true nature. It’s the realization that you are not a separate ego, you are the eternal, unbounded energy of the universe.

That’s is a pretty powerful realization. And while I wholeheartedly believe in the value and merit of attaining Enlightenment, I think in some ways it is vastly overrated. That’s because people think Enlightenment means the end of their problems, the end of the struggles of living.

People want their mystics and masters to be free from the same struggles that make them want to escape life. They want Enlightenment to be a panacea for their problems. They don’t want their masters to have the same troubles they have, they want them to be beyond them. They see Enlightenment as some grandeur state where the struggles of life no longer exist.

The great Enlightened masters (Christ, Buddha, Moses, Lao Tzu, and many others), did not become Enlightened and retreat into a cave. They did not merely transcend their egos. They became great big egos. They engaged life completely and fearlessly and shook the earth from its very foundation. They did not seek Enlightenment as an escape from life, but as a means to live more completely.

Many people seek Enlightenment as an escape from life. And while Enlightenment can do many things, there are some things it cannot do:

• Your realization that everything is non-dual will not break all of the previous self-limiting and fear-based beliefs you have with yourself. Breaking those agreements will require hard work and perspiration to change.
• Wearing a Buddha necklace or getting a tattoo of the Yin and Yang will not stop you from having to solve real problems, like how to deal with the job you can’t stand.
• Enlightenment will not solve your relationship problems with others or with yourself. It won’t make your husband any less barbaric, and it won’t lessen the wrath of your wife’s PMS.
• It will not get you out of debt or free you from financial struggle. It won’t stop you from making stupid decisions, like buying an HDTV on credit, after you just missed your mortgage payment.
• Transcending your ego will not make your ego disappear. You will still have to deal with ego-based desire and suffering.

Reaching Enlightenment will not turn you into an invincible ball of energy high above the world and all its troubles. It will not make you immune to the sometimes callous and careless words of others. Perceiving the truth of the Yin and Yang, the Diamond Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita will not make all of your problems go away.

Despite all the things that Enlightenment can’t do, there are certainly many benefits to “achieving” it. Most importantly, it will help you understand your true nature and help you find peace in your heart.

While Enlightenment can’t solve all your problems it certainly can help you realize:

• Death and birth are an illusion. (But someone poking you in the eye still might hurt.)
• Life is a dream with the brain awake.
• Beliefs are subjective. Something is only true if you believe it is. (Except maybe gravity.)
• Life is essentially one, everything is consciousness.

With these realizations you can:

• Know that you are eternal and there is no reason to fear death, or anything for that matter. Essentially, if you are experiencing fear, there’s a bug in your consciousness.
• What you do to others, you are really doing to yourself.
• You know yourself through the difference of others, you perceive in others the reflection of yourself. Ie. if you think everyone else is an asshole, it just might be you.
  
• Because we are all one, compassion and love become the highest principles.

Reaching Enlightenment doesn’t mean your soul shoots out of the top of your heart and you become omniscient. Enlightenment can help solve some of the toughest problems of life. But it is not a means of escape from life.

In reality, enlightenment brings you into a deeper, more intimate relationship with life.

Rather, Enlightenment means dropping into your body more completely. It means living life more fully, passionately and fearlessly.

Enlightenment isn’t about becoming omniscient and escaping life. It’s about living with verve and passion. Am I the only one that’s noticed people put Enlightenment above themselves, out of reach? What do you think, do people have the wrong idea about Enlightenment?

For more articles that break the mold Subscribe to Illuminated Mind.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before, “talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.” But is thinking to yourself all the time madness too?

If you’re talking to someone and you never stop to listen, you’ll never hear anything they have to say. In the same way, if you’re talking to yourself all the time (or thinking) you’ll never have anything to think about except thoughts. You’re never in relationship with reality, because you’re living entirely in the world of symbols and concepts.

Reality has concepts and symbols in it, of course. But reality itself is not a concept. It is beyond concepts.

If we’re thinking all the time, we’re constantly comparing and judging everything. Reality definitely has judgment in it, but like concepts, it is beyond them. Most importantly, reality is beyond labels. In order to be in relationship with reality, we need to stop and listen. We need to go out of our mind.

In order to listen, we have to quiet our thoughts. If you’re like me or the other 99.9% of the world, this probably won’t be easy for you at first. We’re used to talking to ourselves constantly. We talk to ourselves in line at the grocery store, at our desks, while we eat. We even talk to ourselves while other people are talking to us.

When I first tried meditating, I tried to silence my thoughts, I tried to shove them out of my mental space. I did this with great effort and determination. Guess what happened? Nothing. Well not nothing, it just made me think even more (this is a common experience). So I tried even harder. I tried to push them out of the way and let no disturbance enter. But the harder I tried, the more disturbed my mind was.

It was like trying to smooth water with a flat iron. You just disturb it even more.

So if mandating your thoughts away doesn’t work, what will? The answer is just to let your thoughts go. Just watch them. Don’t try to stop yourself from thinking, that will just encourage it even more.

In meditation (the art of going out of your mind) there are various props we use to assist us:

• Music. I prefer listening to Japanese flute when I’m listening to music while meditating. Stan Richardson is highly recommended.
• Incense. Our sense of smell is our repressed sense. Focusing on the smell can help give your mind “single-pointedness” and relieve you from distraction.
• Breath. What would this guide be without mentioning our breath? Every meditation guide includes it, and for good reason. By focusing on your breath, you’re making a connection between your body and mind. Notice how your breath can be a both voluntary and involuntary action.
• Walking. I usually have the easiest time meditating while I’m walking. When I’m sitting in one place for a long time, my mind gets restless. When I’m walking, I can focus on the scenery around me and let my mind become quiet.
• Chanting. This isn’t a method I use a lot, but it can be a very powerful one. Chanting Om has been the most effective method for me. I concentrate on the fact that it represents the entire spectrum of sound and therefore the entire energy of the universe.

There are a lot of other methods, or props that can help you meditate and go out of your mind. Laughing is another very powerful one. Simply laugh hysterically. You don’t need a reason, although I recommend doing it when you’re alone, otherwise you might get some interesting looks. This is guaranteed to make you go out of your mind.

There are plenty of resources online that will tell you about the benefits of meditation. Better focus, a more peaceful mind, and the ability to handle negative emotions more easily. I won’t belabor you with all the benefits of going out of your mind, they’re thoroughly covered elsewhere. There is, however, one benefit that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

The Inescapable Feeling of Total Contentment

There’s two different kinds of contentment, little contentment and big contentment. Little contentment is the type of satisfaction you get when you buy that new computer you’ve been saving for. It’s the feeling you get when you accomplish a goal, finish college and get your drivers license for the first time. While this type of contentment is certainly important, there’s a bigger contentment you simply can’t get through any accomplishment.

Total contentment is the feeling you get when your mind is completely empty. You’ve released all thoughts, labels and judgment and you simply are. When you do this, there’s a subtle feeling that there’s no longer a difference between you and everyone else, between what in here and what’s out there.

When you realize this, you realize that everything is already accomplished. Everything that’s strived for has been won, everything that’s been longed for has been attained and everything that’s been desired has been satisfied.

Beyond Your Mind

You feel complete peace, because you don’t identify with anything, you’re simply witnessing without passing judgment (it takes a lot of energy to pass judgment all the time, sometimes you just need a break)

When we silence our minds, we are able to just be; without judgment, without identification, without pining over the past and worrying about the future. We can completely shed our ego and re-center ourselves.

Most importantly, going out of your mind is about finding peace and perspective. Creating a story, with all the drama, the heartache and struggle is a beautiful thing. But if all we identify with is our story, we forget the complete perfection that exists in the present moment. We’re living somewhere else. Instead of living in relationship (and harmony) with reality, we’re identifying with some small portion of it.

Going out of your mind is about reconnecting to the source, remembering where you came from and why you’re here. It’s about finding perspective and solace in the insanity of day to day life.

Going out of your mind might seem insane. It seems like that because you’re not finding an answer within your mind. You’re going beyond it, you’re going to the source.

My recommendation: go out of your mind at least once a day (if it helps you bring it into your routine, you can do it while you brush your teeth).

For more ways to stay sane (in unexpected ways) Subscribe to Illuminated Mind.

For a long time, I debated as to whether or not I should write about my path to personal growth. After much reflection, I decided that if there’s at least one person that can be inspired or learn something from my story, it’s worth sharing. This is a story about how one day changed my life; the day of my overdose.

A Curious Boy

Since I was a young boy, I’ve always had a desire to figure out how things worked, taking them apart and putting them back together. Although the putting it back together part didn’t always work so well. My curiosity for how things work led to me explore how my inner world operated. I questioned the religion I was born with; I questioned the government; I questioned life; I questioned society, education, love, humanity, purpose, and beliefs. You name it, I questioned it.

My interest led me to Eastern philosophy and I began to question my beliefs about reality and how they affected my life. The first book that led me to taking an active role in responsibility for my life was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I first picked up his book in November 2006. I finished it a few days later.

Reading the Four Agreements changed my perspective on life completely. The Four Agreements essentially says that your life is determined by the beliefs or agreements that you have. You agree that things are a certain way and because you put your faith in them, it becomes true for you. I made a promise to keep these agreements with myself. I wasn’t always successful, but I kept the promise to do my best.

On The Edge

Despite my best intentions to improve my life, I had a highly addictive personality. I would often drink 5-6 times a week and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I smoked pot almost daily, as well. For me, having fun and using were synonymous. If there was no alcohol, pot or some other drug, our sole mission was to find some. While this definitely wasn’t harmless, it was beginning of something much worse.

On Halloween night of 2006, a friend at the bar in the bathroom offered me a line of coke. I felt elusive; I could think faster, it boosted my creativity. It felt like nothing I had ever felt before. It felt like heaven. Coke liked me and I definitely liked coke.

Despite how it made me feel that night, I knew the dangers of the drug. Pot, beer, and cigarettes were fine, I thought. But coke? That’s not something I ever want to get involved with. I stood true to myself and didn’t touch it, that was until I moved into a new neighborhood.

4 Liquor Stores in a 2 Block Radius

It wasn’t exactly skid row, but it was definitely wasn’t the nicest neighborhood I’ve lived in. Anytime there are 4 liquor stores within a 2 block radius, chances are it’s not exactly gentrified. One of my roommates was an English major and the other a Vietnamese exchange student who would often warn me about seeing “suspicious behavior” around the neighborhood. I don’t think he knew the full extent of things.

The state of the neighborhood never really bothered me. I saw it as temporary until I could move in with my girlfriend (who is now my wife) in a better neighborhood.

My best friend at the time and I ended up going to my neighbor’s apartment to hang out often (my apartment was not the most ideal place; my roommate stayed in the living room). Apparently, my best friend and my neighbor went way back. I immediately thought his roommate was shady, but my friend assured me he was alright.

Just This Once

The first time I went over to his apartment, his roommate offered me a line. I thought, What the hell, one line couldn’t hurt. A few days later, I bought two grams from him. Being the business man that I am, I figured if I’m going to buy it, I don’t want to waste my money, right? I’ll do half a gram and have him sell the other one and a half. I would make my money back and that would be the end of it. Naively, I trusted him. That was my first mistake.

The next day, I went over to see if he had sold the coke and had my money. He told me that they had stayed up all night doing the coke and would pay me back soon. This guy was a professional hustler and I got beat. It was taking him forever to pay me back and I was getting restless, but since I was his neighbor, he couldn’t avoid me. I knew that he was always broke, but he somehow always had drugs. I told him instead of paying me back in cash, he could hook me up with a line here or half a gram there. If he’s not going to pay me, I thought, I might as well get something. That was my second mistake.

Basically, him paying me back in coke over a period of a week or two made me end up wanting more when he couldn’t come through. I cut out the middle man and started going directly to his dealer. Coke was fun at first, but after a few weeks, the come down was unpleasant. Not to mention, sitting in paranoia half the night, wondering if my roommates could hear me snorting coke. The enjoyment had worn off. It was now an addiction.

Attempting to Start Over

In the midst of all this, my girlfriend and I were moving into a new apartment in a better neighborhood. She had no idea I had even done coke and I made a promise to myself that now that we were moving in together, my affair with cocaine was over. The day my girlfriend moved in, I told her that I wasn’t feeling well, in an attempt to explain my strange behavior (I was really high). She was naive – she had very little experience with drugs – and assumed “my sickness” would pass in a day or two. After she went to bed, I spent most of the night in the bathroom snorting coke into my now obliterated nose or outside smoking. I spent every minute sniffing, not wanting to waste any of the intoxicating drug. My paranoia was getting worse; I became increasingly on edge.

It was somewhere around 3am when my paranoia reached its peak. I couldn’t handle wondering if my girlfriend or the neighbors could hear me anymore. I had bought two grams earlier that day and had about one and a half left. I decided I was going to swallow it. That was my final mistake.

I swallowed everything I had left; I was pretty much out of my mind at this point. I felt a strange mix of paranoia and euphoria. It was as if there was a master control switch to the universe, and it had just been turned from three to two hundred and ten. Sounds I never would have noticed seemed like they were having a live concert inside my head. Endorphins rushed like lightning through my bloodstream. My heart was racing, my body was shaking and I was having heart palpitations. The intensity had become too much. I decided I was going to go upstairs to our loft to lay down and try to relax. The last thing I remember was telling my girlfriend that I loved her.

Disoriented

I didn’t know whether I had been sleeping or had gone unconscious. When I woke up, my girlfriend was on the phone with the paramedics. I was trying to make sense of everything, but every logical faculty within me had been shut down. An ambulance was pulling up to our house and she was directing me to go downstairs. I had a seizure due to overdose. My girlfriend had no idea what happened.

I was rushed to the hospital, hooked up to IVs and given two shots of Ativan, a sedative that is common in the treatment of anxiety and acute seizures. My heart rate was well over 200 and my blood pressure was in the 180’s before I received the medication. My blood pressure finally stabilized after the medication, but my heart rate would not go down. The doctor told my girlfriend it was probably due to anxiety and the emotional stress of what happened and advised her to leave until I calmed down. It was very obvious that I felt like I had completely betrayed my girlfriend; I couldn’t stop thinking about her or what I had done. I was kept in the hospital for 12 hours before my girlfriend picked me up to take me home.

When I got home, the Ativan was still heavily in my system. According to my now-wife, I slept for a few hours, woke up and used the bathroom, where I peed out some of the coke, which was excruciatingly painful. Later that afternoon, my sister arrived from Santa Barbara to give my wife some much needed moral support. My wife was 19 at the time and had just moved out for the first time in her life. Needless to say, she was traumatized. I don’t know how she handled the situation as well as she did.

New Beginning

The next morning I sat down with my girlfriend and sister to discuss what I was going to do to get help. Without them, I don’t know what I would have done. They had a list for me of all the things I needed to do, otherwise my girlfriend couldn’t be with me anymore.

• Break ties with all of my old friends.
• Change my phone number.
• No alcohol, no smoking, nothing.
• Talk to my family and admit my mistakes (as well as with my wife’s dad).
• Go to Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings.

Within days, I did all of these things diligently. Eventually I stopped going to NA meetings, because I didn’t feel they were helping me. While some people really need the help of meetings, I felt they perpetuated my problem. Calling myself an addict just seemed to reinforce my identity with being an addict. I wanted to move past that and identify with something else. I wanted to identify with sobriety. The hardest part of this was when someone asked me “What are you doing to get help?” and my answer wasn’t very concrete. I couldn’t show them a slip my sponsor signed off every week or that I was in a rehab program. “I’m working on it within myself,” was my response.

A few things helped me overcome – my therapist prefers the word “integrate” – my overdose and addiction. I began taking my personal development seriously. I quit drinking and smoking pot immediately after my overdose. I broke all ties with my old friends, including my best friend. This was one of the hardest things for me, but I knew that if I wanted to change, I had to change the people I affiliated with. I also didn’t touch alcohol for a year. I quit smoking cigarettes a few weeks later, after being a smoker for 5 years. I began walking to work everyday, four and a half miles each way. I started journaling and meditating. I began reading Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog. A few weeks later, I had read every article on his site (over 700 articles). I was committed.

Anniversary

May 27th was the anniversary of my overdose and the day that changed my life. I still struggle with how to integrate this experience with my life now, it’s hard to think about how careless I was. Somehow I feel sharing this experience with others will help me though, and hopefully help someone else. I felt a lot of guilt within me and dealt with feelings of betrayal from my wife. I still don’t know how she had the courage to love me through everything, through my deception and dishonesty. She is an amazing woman.

I’ve learned that when something knocks you down in life, you have two choices. You can either lay there and wonder why bad things happen to you, or you can get back up on your feet and make the choice to learn from your mistakes. In my case, I didn’t have the option of letting my pride get in the way. I knew that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. If I didn’t change then, I’m not sure if I would have ever had the opportunity again. I couldn’t take that risk.

I made the choice to learn from my experience and take control of my life. If my life was going to turn around, it was going to be up to me. I don’t know where I got the courage to face my mistakes and move forward the way I did. I think there was an angel watching over me that day. I know there was a chance I could have not made it out of that seizure, but I did. It’s funny, I’ve always told my wife she’s my angel since we first started dating. I think she was my angel that day.

A Light in the Dark

I always wonder if I could go back and change it, would I want it to happen again? I’m really not so sure. Sometimes it takes the most difficult experiences to smooth out the rough edges in your life. In my case, it wasn’t just the edges, but the very core of my being.

I wanted to share my story with you, to let you know no matter what situation you’re in right now, you have a choice. You can always choose a new path. Your path might be littered with obstacles, but it’s those challenges that define your character. Those challenges are opportunities in disguise. They are there to test your strength and your faith. It’s in those moments that we see our light truly shine. We only need to remember, that it’s through the darkness, we can see the light.

For more inspirational articles subscribe to Illuminated Mind.

In my past I’ve had a lot of failed relationships. I was never able to understand why these relationships failed until I took a closer look at myself. I realized that I was seeking approval and love from my partner, before I found it within myself. I was looking for something from someone else that only I could give myself. The more I realized the importance of finding validation within me, I begin to take steps to love myself more fully. Flaws and all.

If we don’t have an adequate amount of self love, we’ll likely search for it somewhere outside ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with seeking love from others. Seeking ourselves, or our sense of self-worth in that love, is the problem.

Love must first come from within. No matter how much others praise, love or admire us, unless we feel that way on the inside, we’ll end up rejecting their love. If we don’t love ourselves, it’s hard for us to imagine how anyone else can love us.

How can we cultivate love within us? Just as we show our loved ones regular acts of love, we too need to show ourselves loving actions.

In India, they have a practice called a puja. A puja is a devotion to the gods. It can be an offering of food, incense, flowers, or a prayer, anything that can be interpreted as a sign of love. We can also use a puja or act of devotion, to show ourselves love. Remember, love is a verb.

Here are some suggestions for making a puja to yourself:

1. Go on a self-date.

Spend some time alone with yourself. Don’t think about what you need to do the next day or the cleaning up you need to do around the house. Just be fully in the moment and enjoy yourself.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Take yourself out to a movie. Be adventurous and pick a movie you wouldn’t normally see. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy the change of pace.
• Go to lunch at your favorite restaurant, sit and people watch.
• Go to a local caf� and bring a good book with you. Enjoy a cup of chai or tea and just relax.

2. Journal.

• Write a gratitude journal entry. List all of the things you’re grateful for in your life. Try going beyond the obvious thing such as your job, your house and your car. Are you grateful for your breath, existence, love, the sun, your mistakes?
• Let go. Take a moment to list all the mistakes you’ve made and forgive yourself for them. What are some of the things others have done to wrong you? List them and forgive them.
• Achievements and success. What are some of your greatest achievements? What are you most proud of in your life? We have a tendency to focus more on our shortcomings then our success. It’s important that we recognize our achievements and celebrate our success.

3. Do something special for someone else. This may sound opposite to all the other advice here, but we often feel the best about ourselves when we do something selflessly for others.

4. Go for a drive, blare your music. Simple, yet wonderful.

5. Buy yourself a trinket. Or an ice cream cone, or an ice cream cone trinket. The focus isn’t on spending money, it’s about doing something special for yourself.

6. Get outside. Go for a long walk or bike ride to a nearby caf� or just around your neighborhood. This is my personal favorite, it helps me clear my head and gain perspective in my life. I also like to go for presence walks, where the only thing I’m focused on is the present moment. You’ll think you’ve never seen a flower before.

6. Turn off the lights and light some candles, burn some incense if you’re inclined. Drink a glass of wine, coffee, or tea, read a good book, or watch a good movie. Look at old photographs and reminisce.

7. Sing to your plants. Just kidding (or am I?)

8. Give yourself the spa treatment. We don’t have to go to the spa to find relaxation; we can create it in our own home. Here are a few examples:

• Aroma therapy. Take a ceramic cup and pour some hot water in it. Now put 2-3 drops of essential oil such as peppermint, lavender or jasmine in your water. Put a tower over your head, forget everything and just breathe.
• Take a mini-vacation. Close your eyes and imagine yourself anywhere you’d like to be in the world. Imagine the most calming relaxing place. Go online and use pictures if it helps you. The point is to bring yourself into a state of relaxation.

I hope you enjoy these simple suggestions for making a puja to yourself.

What do you do to show yourself love?

Related articles:

• How to Love Yourself in 17 Ways
• The Secret to Self Love

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photo by: Hejaab

I know I’m probably not the only one that has suffered from a deteriorating vision. I attribute it mostly to how much time I’ve stared at the computer screen over my life. I’ve tried to develop a few habits and have even started practicing eye asanas to help improve my vision, or at least stop it from deteriorating.

Most of our deterioration of vision is caused by looking at things directly in front of us. When we’re staring at things right in front of our faces for prolonged periods of time, our eyes get strained, they get tired. When we’re working in the same narrow range of focus, the muscles surrounding our eyes have to work harder and they begin to deteriorate over time. The best way we can combat this is practicing depth asanas.

Exercise 1: Place your index finger about 12 inches away from your eyes, gently gaze at the tip of your finger for 5-10 seconds. Now gradually and slowly move your finger closer and closer to your eyes. Don’t poke your eye out! Practice this for 3-4 minutes, a few times a day. Afterwards, blink or squeeze your eyes shut to relax them.

Exercise 2: When you are outside, practice looking at something very close, then gradually move your focus further and further away. This works best for me when I’m walking down the sidewalk somewhere, or in an open area. Practice this for 30 seconds or so at a time whenever you’re outside.

Many of our eye-related problems come from a lack of tone and flexibility in the eye muscles. If we practice eye asanas, yoga for your eyes, we can reduce or eliminate these problems.

Exercise 3: Move your eyes as far upward as you can. Take one breath in and out slowly. Move your eyes as far downward as you can, count one breath. Repeat this 4 times.

Exercise 4: Move your eyes as far to the right as you can, count one breath. Move your eyes as far to the left as you can, count one breath. Repeat 4 times. Remember to close your eyes and rest after each set of 4 repetitions.

Exercise 5: Move your eyes as far up and to the right as you can, find a point in your vision to focus on, count one breath. Do the same thing in the far left bottom point in your field of vision. Repeat 4 times.

Now do the same thing in reverse, top left and bottom right, 4 times. Don’t forget to blink and relax your eyes if they become too strained.

Exercise 6: Now we’re going to practice eye-circling. This is easy, we’re going to start by moving our as far upward as we can, and then moving them counter-clockwise. Do this slowly and make a full circle of your vision. Repeat in the opposite direction.

Palming: This exercise is crucial to relaxing the eyes after we have completed our exercises. It has a very calming effect and relaxes the nervous system.

Sit up straight, back erect, focus on your breathing. Now take your hands and rub them vigorously together for 15 to 20 seconds. Put your palms over your eyes, facing you, fingers interlaced. Remember to breathe deeply. When we do the palming exercise we relax the eyes and send a current of electricity through them, stimulating the nervous and circulatory system, releasing tension and improving our eyes performance.

A few more tips:

• Eat more carrots.. and spinach. Carrots have been known to maintain healthy vision. While they won’t miraculous cure blindness, they will help you maintain healthy eyesight. Spinach is another good source for keeping your eyes healthy, the large amounts of vitamin a and beta-carotene help keep your eyes in shape.
• Move your computer screen right below eye level. This will cause your eyes to close slightly and minimize fluid evaporation while staying at the computer for long hours.
• Turn down the heat in your house. When it’s too hot in an improperly ventilated room, the air becomes dry, and so do our eyes. By turning down the heat, we can save some of the strain on our eyes.
• Blink. Take your eyes away from the computer for a few seconds and just take the time to just.. blink.

More resources on improving your vision:

• 24 Easy Ways to Improve Your Vision
  
• Improve your vision by understanding it better
• Do eye exercises really work? – This in-depth article will tell you all the myths and truths about eye exercises and vision therapy
• Improve your vision instantly with your fist

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